News

Pick of the Week: Yarn

Dundee Rep, Dundee, until May 3

When you think of the fashion capitals of the world, Dundee does not immediately jump to mind. But in the mid- to late 19th-century the city was a textile capital. Nicknamed Juteopolis, it was one of the biggest exporters of jute in Europe, churning out vast quantities of cloth - for ropes, aprons, carpets and parachutes as well as clothes - from numerous mills on the banks of the Tay.

The city's towering industrial past is the platform for a new production from Edinburgh theatre company Grid Iron and the Dundee Rep ensemble. Yarn weaves stories about various vestments into a promenade production in the disused spaces of the Verdant Works, a former jute mill and now working museum.

"Every time we do a show in a different city," says Judith Doherty from Grid Iron, the producer of Yarn. "We try to weave the show around the history of the city and